Go back and read my post here and on the States Rights thread and it will explain.
I guess that the whole Nullification Controversy and the US and SC almost coming to blows in 1832 was a fallacy as well.
It was all intermingled, the tariffs, internal improvements, States Rights, the slavery issue and abolitionist movement, the interpretation of the Constitution. If you can't see that then you never will and I am wasting my time.
Read my lips, it was not a single issue adressed over a few years. It was an issue that festered for almost 50 years until it exploded in the single most dramatic event in this nations history.
It all started with tariffs.

Tariffs serving as a protection for fledgling industry were acknowledged during the Constitutional Convention. Protectionism took a stronger hold in 1816 when the Britich openly favored "dumping" to dampen, if not shut down, US manufacturing. The Tariff of Abominations which some of us are beating severly, was packed with onerous duties inserted by southern reps and senators in hopes that it would prove too distasteful to pass. It passed. The Tariff of 1832 was an attempt to back off from that bill, but this time Calhoun opposed it. (He had been in favor of the protectionist tariffs of 1816.)

From that point on, tariff rates generally were on a downward drift until the government was nearly bankrupted during the Buchanan Presidency. The antebellum Morrill tariff (as opposed to the one passed during the war), although a bit higher than the 1857 Tariff, was not greater than the one that preceded the 1857 Tariff.

I can understand that the planters didn't appreciate paying duties on their cigars and wine, and did not appreciate that the northern mills and foundries were being encouraged to grow and provide jobs. After all, they didn't have an industrial base to benefit from protection. And they didn't care about jobs or infrastructure.

Did I read somewhere back there that cotton prices had been depressed? What might have been the reason for that? A few bumper years? We tend to ignore that the price of cotton was not entirely set in England. It was set by demand and supply, and Charleston had a voice in setting that market price. Cotton sold for what it could get, not because of duties on certain imports. Southern cotton sold for about the same price as Egyptian, or Indian or South American cotton.

The cotton producers of the south resented the piece of their action taken out by financiers, agents, factors, insurers, shippers and such. But they made no move to develop their own financiers, agents, factors, insurers, shippers and such. Those were not the business of gentlemen. They just bought more land and more slaves and complained about the cost of doing business -- crowding the little guy into hills and hollows and river bottoms unsuitable for their type of agriculture. Meanwhile, there were precious few rails built to spread industry into the hinterlands -- only to provide transport of cotton bales to a river where the bales could be barged out.

Blaming that short-sightedness on oppressive tariffs is hocus-pocus. The die had been cast, and it wasn't tariffs, protective or otherwise, that cast it.

Ole thank you for speaking far better than I. I've been called a pothead, stop sign it almost makes one believe that any who disagree have to be ... never mind. I think I'll just go have another beer and maybe try conversation w/ some people capable of educated discourse. Maybe a good game of chess w/ my cat; yeah that will do. Say do you think the tarrifs didn't effect West Virginia? Sorry, wait a minute I have to get the English catonese dictionary.

You know I find you two absolutely amazing. While much of what you have written is correct Ole it comes from a very shortsighted, biased point of view. You conveniently leave out much and don't look at the whole picture.

Johan on the other hand, I never accused or insinuated you smoke pot, you put that gem into your mind. Your favorite expression was "smoke and mirrors" so I referred to your avatar. Talk about a brick wall. Why have you continued to bring up "facts and figures" I never posted, nor are based in fact? I see nothing more than a cut and paste artist.

The problem is you guys want to try and deny 50 to 60 years of history. My aim was not to take a side but to educate that the causes of the war were many, varied and very complicated. I have never for a minute posted that the tariffs were the cause of the war, nor even the major cause. I am under no allusions as to the many real causes. What I do try and do is to show the correlation between the many causes.
I don't give a rats behind about what someone has posted over 33 pages on another site about the tariff issue. 70% was biased, junk economics, from both sides.

While I am Southern, which puts me automatically in the Lost Cause, loser category, I am proud of my ancestry. I am proud of my heritage on both sides of the family, North and South, I am proud to be an American. That being said the propaganda perpetrated from the Northern point of view has been just as biased, as anything the Lost Cause movement espoused.

If you guys can't see the whole picture and read a post for what it is and insist on snipping and tearing apart each post then maybe I am wasting my time.

If you think the pablum fed you that the South was nothing more than an evil empire of dirt poor red necks and brandy sniffing aristocrats, well so be it. What a shame.

To others reading this, sorry for the rant. It is situations like this that cause so many not to post. I have been coming to this site for about a year and a half before I posted my first comment. Maybe I didn't do my homework as well as I should.

Johan, please re read my post and tell me where I called you a stop sign. I said that it was like arguing with a stop sign... a fairly common expression when dealing with one who is so stubborn as to refuse to consider another's point of view.

Frankly, I too am beginning to wonder why I waste my time here...used to be enjoyable, but now I feel like I have to do a year's research before typing my first word.
I enjoy the CW and friendly discussions and the poking of fun at each other. I do NOT enjoy what this thread has become and for my part in it, I apopogize to all.

Free markets and competition create new opportunities, innovation, change and ideas in economy, society and politics. The 2 sections are evolving at very different rates.

The north and west embrace the new concepts and interpretations and change is accelerating there. The hung their hat on the idea that Congress can regulate commerce and levy taxes because it was in their interest. In addition they want *national* standards and solutions applying to *all* states, rather than many local solutions (see the southern railroad gauge problem for example).

The south, leery of change, competition and especially new ideas, moves into the future at a glacial pace.

What is a source of ‘South Carolina on the average was paying over $500,000 per year more in tariffs that they got back from the Federal Government’?